The common answer to this question is that anonymity online makes us vicious, in the same way in vino veritas is said when some drunk person accidentally blurts out what they're truly thinking.
However, I think it's a combination of factors:
1. You see only the words and the ideas, not the person; 2. There is no social context, like being in line at a bakery; 3. There is little chance of seeing that person again if you don't want to, or of getting the crap pounded out of you; 4. People are very frustrated and angry in general.
If you are in real life, you're interacting with people in a community and you might want to see them again. However, in cities, people behave just about as viciously as they do online, with a slight modification to avoid starting actual physical confrontations.
It's the little things: cutting in line, being snide, bullying people out of the way with your SUV, littering, yapping on cell phones at counters.
Online, you're in a world made only of words and ideas. This encourages you to blurt out what you're really thinking, which is generally disliking most people who aren't doing things your way. There's wisdom in this in that if you've been in the world for awhile, your way evolved because it makes sense. You cast aside all the other behaviors and your way is the aggregate of what's left.
The biggest crypto-factor here however is that people in this society are frustrated. We are meat, with a for sale price on our heads, and we must constantly keep making ourselves available to a callous world in order to bring in the cash. It turns people into whores, makes them hate themselves, and makes them hate the competition, which is everyone else.
I've lived across the world in first-world nations and third-world nations, and while the first-world nations are good on everything else, the degree of self-hatred and resentment here makes me long for the jungle.
My firmly held belief is that every niche no matter how small, no matter how bizarre your particular thing that you care a lot about is, there are other people out there who really want to talk about it as well. It's just that there has been no scalable way to make it happen before the Internet.
What about backflow: people who see all these niche communities, and decide to get involved with one, not out of interest in the topic, but because they need a group?
It's kind of like street gangs. At first they existed to provide protection to members, but then they became a trend in their own right, like those shirts with the little alligators on them. Does backflow affect the quality of discussion?
What I take issue with is the propagation of half truths and blatant lies.
Wouldn't it be nice if everything reported was the truth?
However, this conflicts with "freedom." We have the ability to believe whatever we want, and to purchase news-entertainment products based on that notion.
We're either going to have to enforce "truth" (which leads to an authoritarian, totalitarian, fascist or total state) or have a pluralistic definition of truth.
Which do you want? There doesn't seem to be much of a gray area.
As depressing as it is, I guess I think that the current state of media, the partisanship, I don't think that this is a temporary state. I think that this is normal. Humans are kind of defined by the whole concept of, us versus them. I think that we return to that almost all the time.
You mention this in an election year, which is when we see people approach the future governance of their country with the same attitude they approach football games, lawsuits and social conflicts.
Us versus them rules us to this day.
Is it depressing? It could be that humanity itself is destined to break up into niche markets, or micro-nations. At least you know that everyone else in your group has the same interests and community standards.
It's easy to find people to re-design existing software to create alternatives.
However, the problem is getting together the resources to invent new software.
Without a copyright, this software will (a) soon be emulated and given away free on the FOSS level; and (b) quickly be cloned and taken out of the hands of its creators on the commercial level.
This dis-incentivizes companies and creators to invent new software types.
I hope they keep the.co.uk nomenclature, because it is like many other things idiosyncratic to that strange little island and its wonderfully unique people. When you see one of those addresses, it reminds you of the very English trait of liking order: tea at 11 sharp, queue up for fish 'n chips, and the domain name goes after the.co because it's commercial. God save the Queen!
Computers are fast, reliable and use UNIX-like operating systems or near analogues. Not only that, but this technology is now getting embedded in every gadget we own.
What is the next frontier? Will it be technological, social, or legal? Or will it be tangential technological issues like interface design, interoperability, or privacy, that aren't necessarily new technologies so much as new configurations of existing technology?
The consumers want to know
on
Linux 3.6 Released
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
Important questions from consumers, who are also voters and thus determine (collectively) your fate:
1. Does it stream video of Honey Boo Boo? 2. Does it have iTunes to get the latest from Nicki Minaj?
If not, how do we know this is relevant at all to our fascinating modern lives?
Having had legitimate posts downvoted to "Flamebait" for offending community pretense, I'm not going to pretend Slashdot is a Utopia. People are still people, and people are still stupid, even when they're smart. On the internet, this all gets turned up to 11.
However, Slashdot is a better example of what the net can be than "social networking" like Facebook, Myspace, Digg, Fark, Reddit, etc. These sites are clustered around the idea of people socializing through the internet. As a nerd, I think that's foolish. You socialize around being a person who likes to be with other people, and you find people who you respect.
A lot has changed in the past 15 years. UNIX is now mainstream, running on thousands of devices. Even more, computer technology and networking are now mainstream, with ordinary people navigating wi-fi hotspots and even writing code for their phones. What once was special and unique is no longer so removed from the experience of normal people.
I miss CmdrTaco and his guidance, but think the team is doing a good job. That's fortunate, as they have quite a task ahead of them: remaining focused on what it is they do well in a world that has surged past their original mission, and now needs new types of guidance with new uses of technology.
The fact is that you can't have three big dogs in the same room, and not have each one want to be the top dog. USA, China and Russia are going to duke it out for who's top dog.
That being said, it's foolish that we allow so many Chinese firms to make vital parts of our infrastructure. The solution there won't be as easy as invoking a little-known law.
This is the same paradox Microsoft struggled with on Windows XP: if you make a really good product, people will buy it once and buy nothing else.
If you wonder why Microsoft makes its money selling Windows with new PCs, this is why. Buying a new PC is the only time most of us buy an operating system.
Look for them to go to a subscription model soon, with different UIs being options on a constantly-refined code base. It's about the only way to make money outside of new PC OS sales.
I imagine this is the same reason that every car manufacturer hasn't re-tooled and started making those old VW bugs. A car that runs forever is a bad product.
A bigot is someone who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief or opinion. As a strong atheist, I am a bigot about religion in much the same way I am a bigot about my mathematical belief that 1+1=2, that is, there is no question about the facts.
This definition makes us all into bigots.
I'm bigoted against un-truth. Does this make me a bad person?
If that's the case, I'm not sure I want to be good!
It's a way to try to shut down the discussion at the point where it'd be appropriate to acknowledge that a valid point has been made. It's a cowardly escape route. It's for childish people who think that disagreeing with somoene makes them THE ENEMY and so admitting when THE ENEMY has made a good point and dealing with it like a mature adult (which, oh my god, might involve changing your own point of view) would mean aiding and abetting THE ENEMY.
This was my experience in college.
If someone brings up an aspect of reality that doesn't affirm that we're all exactly 100% equal, then call them a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, redneck, chauvinist, classist, ageist or genderist.
This allows all discussion to be shut down except that which fawningly panders to the idea of Total Equality, which has started to become a State religion here in the United States and Europe.
This reminds me of the final days of the Soviet Union. There was a shortage of manufacturing parts that made it impossible to make parts for some machinery. However, if you said that there was no way to make parts, that was admitting that the Soviet system had failed, so you would be shot. The only way to survive was to load boxes with irrelevant junk, deliver them as parts, and then when the failure was discovered, claim it was the weather or a manufacturing error. As a result, the Soviet system had no idea it couldn't make parts that it needed until years later.
I'm not denying the good intentions of many in this regard. I, too, have good intentions toward others. As a scientist however I'm only interested in truth, and not political "truth." That kind of fake truth can get us all killed in a nuclear war or other catastrophic failure, like the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Another journalist looked up the journalist who first broke the story, and asked her whether it was clear that Romney was joking:
The Los Angeles Times story that relayed Romney's airplane remark to the world was based off a pool report written by the New York Times's Ashley Parker. When we asked Parker this morning whether it seemed as if Romney made the mark in jest, she left no doubt. "Romney was joking," she e-mailed. Parker told us that while the pool report didn't explicitly indicate that Romney was joking, it was self-evident that he was. "The pool report provided the full transcript of his comments on Ann's plane scare," she said, "and it was clear from the context that he was not being serious."
There you have it from the witness, who is not necessarily pro-Romney.
This entire debacle then is more stupid political flag-waving that distracts from the actual issues. (If you elect a president on the basis of his sense of humor, you may be completely useless.)
This series of unfortunate remarks makes Linus look silly for several reasons.
1. Mittens was obviously joking. 2. Attack candidates on substantive issues. Do you want us dredging up Obama's non-joking verbal gaffe in which he identified the United States as having 57 states? 3. Intolerance. I thought attacks on religion were considered bigoted. Mormonism deserves the same respect we give the exotic religions like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Shintoism, Ba'hai, FSM, etc.
People with liberal arts degrees see geeks as having a one-dimensional understanding of reality. Where the liberal arts teaches hierarchy, geeks tend to see a flat hierarchy in which every possibility is an "option" independent of all other concerns. When it comes to analysis of politics, philosophy or literature, this approach just looks dumb, because it is a dumbing-down of a complex problem into an attitude that suspiciously resembles the search for technological solutions.
Too much of FOSS is based on emulating existing desktop software. It's not doing a great job, and I don't know why. Libre Office is a joke compared to Microsoft Office, once you get out of the "writing letters to Grandma and recipes" phase. In the same way, there is no substitute for Visual Studio, a competitive Photoshop replacement or Open Source video games that compare with the commercial variants. These are task-oriented software products which lead users to anticipate a fully articulated tool.
Where FOSS shines is in areas of technical interest that are not driven by the needs of the consumer, but by other technology, and consistent with prior technology. The many FOSS programming languages, web servers, databases, etc. show why this is the case. These are more infrastructure-related projects which are not going to be driven by consumer demand, and are granular and don't require one great idea but building on other ideas. The tool is formed from stringing these "tool-lets" together.
Instead of trying to essentially rip off successful software packages, FOSS should recognize that the free enterprise model, in which individuals are rewarded for exceptional contributions and given "parental" rights to direct the development of their ideas, is better for specific task software packages especially on the desktop. FOSS should also recognize that the academic/collaborative model works better for infrastructure-oriented software, and go in that direction instead.
If you want to steal data, it's best to cover your tracks. Boot up a five year old live CD, sudo apt-get update and LOL as the computer overwrites its disk a few thousand times.
Every country should be able to tailor the internet to what its population wants. In the West, that's pornography, but other people may have different views. We should be tolerant and respectful of this diversity, and not insist that they join us in enjoying glorious pornography and haphazard troll movies made by former con artists.
Atari computers, back in the early 1980s, showed us the problem of rolling your own hardware, operating system, and software.
Any change you need to make will be (a) huge (b) require 400 internal departments to agree and (c) baffle users.
My suggestion for RIM: just go ahead and fire 2/3 of management and consolidate 2/3 of your internal teams. Then focus on using as much open source hardware and software as you can to reduce costs.
If they start doing this today, they might be able to save themselves from Chapter 11 by Christmas.
His idea might be great when you're talking about people collaborating on a list of details. Everyone can pitch in what they have, and then everyone else comments on it.
Not all software rewards this approach. I'd hate the idea of floating a document in progress on Facebook, and having people post suggestions without having any idea of what the whole finished product should look like.
As as practical uses, Facebook is a lot like Slashdot (but not as cool). I come here not for the chatter, off-topic posts, trolls (well maybe), but for the 10% of the community who know a lot and can think and weigh in on relevant topics.
If you can imagine a version of Facebook for a technical topic, it would be basically the same thing, except that those 10% would be doing the work while the rest goof off.
This is punishing thought crime, justifying actual means by a potential end.
While I am skeptical of governments who punish bad thoughts, I think in this case we're facing a practical decision. A surprising number of people who are about to do horrible things announce their intentions. The best way to get them help is to put them in the hands of people who can actually stop them. A psychiatrist cannot necessarily do so, even if required to report the statements of their patients to the police. However, a police officer can immediately arrest this person, take away his or her weapons, and avoid the possible worse outcome of having the person become a perp (as you say), shoot up some kids, and then get shot by the cops.
Slashdot Mirror
The common answer to this question is that anonymity online makes us vicious, in the same way in vino veritas is said when some drunk person accidentally blurts out what they're truly thinking.
However, I think it's a combination of factors:
1. You see only the words and the ideas, not the person;
2. There is no social context, like being in line at a bakery;
3. There is little chance of seeing that person again if you don't want to, or of getting the crap pounded out of you;
4. People are very frustrated and angry in general.
If you are in real life, you're interacting with people in a community and you might want to see them again. However, in cities, people behave just about as viciously as they do online, with a slight modification to avoid starting actual physical confrontations.
It's the little things: cutting in line, being snide, bullying people out of the way with your SUV, littering, yapping on cell phones at counters.
Online, you're in a world made only of words and ideas. This encourages you to blurt out what you're really thinking, which is generally disliking most people who aren't doing things your way. There's wisdom in this in that if you've been in the world for awhile, your way evolved because it makes sense. You cast aside all the other behaviors and your way is the aggregate of what's left.
The biggest crypto-factor here however is that people in this society are frustrated. We are meat, with a for sale price on our heads, and we must constantly keep making ourselves available to a callous world in order to bring in the cash. It turns people into whores, makes them hate themselves, and makes them hate the competition, which is everyone else.
I've lived across the world in first-world nations and third-world nations, and while the first-world nations are good on everything else, the degree of self-hatred and resentment here makes me long for the jungle.
What about backflow: people who see all these niche communities, and decide to get involved with one, not out of interest in the topic, but because they need a group?
It's kind of like street gangs. At first they existed to provide protection to members, but then they became a trend in their own right, like those shirts with the little alligators on them. Does backflow affect the quality of discussion?
Wouldn't it be nice if everything reported was the truth?
However, this conflicts with "freedom." We have the ability to believe whatever we want, and to purchase news-entertainment products based on that notion.
We're either going to have to enforce "truth" (which leads to an authoritarian, totalitarian, fascist or total state) or have a pluralistic definition of truth.
Which do you want? There doesn't seem to be much of a gray area.
You mention this in an election year, which is when we see people approach the future governance of their country with the same attitude they approach football games, lawsuits and social conflicts.
Us versus them rules us to this day.
Is it depressing? It could be that humanity itself is destined to break up into niche markets, or micro-nations. At least you know that everyone else in your group has the same interests and community standards.
Classist? As in, you must get through the sophomore class to join the junior class?
This is just common sense. Education is based on mastering elementary material before moving to more complex material.
It's easy to find people to re-design existing software to create alternatives.
However, the problem is getting together the resources to invent new software.
Without a copyright, this software will (a) soon be emulated and given away free on the FOSS level; and (b) quickly be cloned and taken out of the hands of its creators on the commercial level.
This dis-incentivizes companies and creators to invent new software types.
I hope they keep the .co.uk nomenclature, because it is like many other things idiosyncratic to that strange little island and its wonderfully unique people. When you see one of those addresses, it reminds you of the very English trait of liking order: tea at 11 sharp, queue up for fish 'n chips, and the domain name goes after the .co because it's commercial. God save the Queen!
My life is complete. I still have a //e and consider it the most fun that hobbyist computing has ever been, before or since. Hack on, nerd brother.
Computers are fast, reliable and use UNIX-like operating systems or near analogues. Not only that, but this technology is now getting embedded in every gadget we own.
What is the next frontier? Will it be technological, social, or legal? Or will it be tangential technological issues like interface design, interoperability, or privacy, that aren't necessarily new technologies so much as new configurations of existing technology?
Important questions from consumers, who are also voters and thus determine (collectively) your fate:
1. Does it stream video of Honey Boo Boo?
2. Does it have iTunes to get the latest from Nicki Minaj?
If not, how do we know this is relevant at all to our fascinating modern lives?
Having had legitimate posts downvoted to "Flamebait" for offending community pretense, I'm not going to pretend Slashdot is a Utopia. People are still people, and people are still stupid, even when they're smart. On the internet, this all gets turned up to 11.
However, Slashdot is a better example of what the net can be than "social networking" like Facebook, Myspace, Digg, Fark, Reddit, etc. These sites are clustered around the idea of people socializing through the internet. As a nerd, I think that's foolish. You socialize around being a person who likes to be with other people, and you find people who you respect.
A lot has changed in the past 15 years. UNIX is now mainstream, running on thousands of devices. Even more, computer technology and networking are now mainstream, with ordinary people navigating wi-fi hotspots and even writing code for their phones. What once was special and unique is no longer so removed from the experience of normal people.
I miss CmdrTaco and his guidance, but think the team is doing a good job. That's fortunate, as they have quite a task ahead of them: remaining focused on what it is they do well in a world that has surged past their original mission, and now needs new types of guidance with new uses of technology.
The fact is that you can't have three big dogs in the same room, and not have each one want to be the top dog. USA, China and Russia are going to duke it out for who's top dog.
That being said, it's foolish that we allow so many Chinese firms to make vital parts of our infrastructure. The solution there won't be as easy as invoking a little-known law.
This is the same paradox Microsoft struggled with on Windows XP: if you make a really good product, people will buy it once and buy nothing else.
If you wonder why Microsoft makes its money selling Windows with new PCs, this is why. Buying a new PC is the only time most of us buy an operating system.
Look for them to go to a subscription model soon, with different UIs being options on a constantly-refined code base. It's about the only way to make money outside of new PC OS sales.
I imagine this is the same reason that every car manufacturer hasn't re-tooled and started making those old VW bugs. A car that runs forever is a bad product.
This definition makes us all into bigots.
I'm bigoted against un-truth. Does this make me a bad person?
If that's the case, I'm not sure I want to be good!
This was my experience in college.
If someone brings up an aspect of reality that doesn't affirm that we're all exactly 100% equal, then call them a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, redneck, chauvinist, classist, ageist or genderist.
This allows all discussion to be shut down except that which fawningly panders to the idea of Total Equality, which has started to become a State religion here in the United States and Europe.
This reminds me of the final days of the Soviet Union. There was a shortage of manufacturing parts that made it impossible to make parts for some machinery. However, if you said that there was no way to make parts, that was admitting that the Soviet system had failed, so you would be shot. The only way to survive was to load boxes with irrelevant junk, deliver them as parts, and then when the failure was discovered, claim it was the weather or a manufacturing error. As a result, the Soviet system had no idea it couldn't make parts that it needed until years later.
I'm not denying the good intentions of many in this regard. I, too, have good intentions toward others. As a scientist however I'm only interested in truth, and not political "truth." That kind of fake truth can get us all killed in a nuclear war or other catastrophic failure, like the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Another journalist looked up the journalist who first broke the story, and asked her whether it was clear that Romney was joking:
There you have it from the witness, who is not necessarily pro-Romney.
This entire debacle then is more stupid political flag-waving that distracts from the actual issues. (If you elect a president on the basis of his sense of humor, you may be completely useless.)
This series of unfortunate remarks makes Linus look silly for several reasons.
1. Mittens was obviously joking.
2. Attack candidates on substantive issues. Do you want us dredging up Obama's non-joking verbal gaffe in which he identified the United States as having 57 states?
3. Intolerance. I thought attacks on religion were considered bigoted. Mormonism deserves the same respect we give the exotic religions like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Shintoism, Ba'hai, FSM, etc.
People with liberal arts degrees see geeks as having a one-dimensional understanding of reality. Where the liberal arts teaches hierarchy, geeks tend to see a flat hierarchy in which every possibility is an "option" independent of all other concerns. When it comes to analysis of politics, philosophy or literature, this approach just looks dumb, because it is a dumbing-down of a complex problem into an attitude that suspiciously resembles the search for technological solutions.
User: How do I get started with Linux?
Linux Community: What distro do you want to use to get started with Linux?
Too much of FOSS is based on emulating existing desktop software. It's not doing a great job, and I don't know why. Libre Office is a joke compared to Microsoft Office, once you get out of the "writing letters to Grandma and recipes" phase. In the same way, there is no substitute for Visual Studio, a competitive Photoshop replacement or Open Source video games that compare with the commercial variants. These are task-oriented software products which lead users to anticipate a fully articulated tool.
Where FOSS shines is in areas of technical interest that are not driven by the needs of the consumer, but by other technology, and consistent with prior technology. The many FOSS programming languages, web servers, databases, etc. show why this is the case. These are more infrastructure-related projects which are not going to be driven by consumer demand, and are granular and don't require one great idea but building on other ideas. The tool is formed from stringing these "tool-lets" together.
Instead of trying to essentially rip off successful software packages, FOSS should recognize that the free enterprise model, in which individuals are rewarded for exceptional contributions and given "parental" rights to direct the development of their ideas, is better for specific task software packages especially on the desktop. FOSS should also recognize that the academic/collaborative model works better for infrastructure-oriented software, and go in that direction instead.
If you want to steal data, it's best to cover your tracks. Boot up a five year old live CD, sudo apt-get update and LOL as the computer overwrites its disk a few thousand times.
Every country should be able to tailor the internet to what its population wants. In the West, that's pornography, but other people may have different views. We should be tolerant and respectful of this diversity, and not insist that they join us in enjoying glorious pornography and haphazard troll movies made by former con artists.
Atari computers, back in the early 1980s, showed us the problem of rolling your own hardware, operating system, and software.
Any change you need to make will be (a) huge (b) require 400 internal departments to agree and (c) baffle users.
My suggestion for RIM: just go ahead and fire 2/3 of management and consolidate 2/3 of your internal teams. Then focus on using as much open source hardware and software as you can to reduce costs.
If they start doing this today, they might be able to save themselves from Chapter 11 by Christmas.
His idea might be great when you're talking about people collaborating on a list of details. Everyone can pitch in what they have, and then everyone else comments on it.
Not all software rewards this approach. I'd hate the idea of floating a document in progress on Facebook, and having people post suggestions without having any idea of what the whole finished product should look like.
As as practical uses, Facebook is a lot like Slashdot (but not as cool). I come here not for the chatter, off-topic posts, trolls (well maybe), but for the 10% of the community who know a lot and can think and weigh in on relevant topics.
If you can imagine a version of Facebook for a technical topic, it would be basically the same thing, except that those 10% would be doing the work while the rest goof off.
While I am skeptical of governments who punish bad thoughts, I think in this case we're facing a practical decision. A surprising number of people who are about to do horrible things announce their intentions. The best way to get them help is to put them in the hands of people who can actually stop them. A psychiatrist cannot necessarily do so, even if required to report the statements of their patients to the police. However, a police officer can immediately arrest this person, take away his or her weapons, and avoid the possible worse outcome of having the person become a perp (as you say), shoot up some kids, and then get shot by the cops.
Actually, this is what people should be doing: responding to obvious cries for help before the perp manages to shoot up a theater full of people.